Since time immemorial straw has been used as bedding for domestic animals, and once soiled it has been used as manure.
These days straw is becoming relatively expensive and a regular supply is becoming difficult to obtain, particularly for those who keep animals but do not grow their own straw.
Further, the use of straw as bedding, even by farmers who grow their own, requires the use of special straw-handling equipment, (e.g. bailers) and storage locations (e.g. barns) together with the labour for collecting and storing the straw at harvest time and for frequent straw-handling throughout the year, i.e. mucking-out and laying new bedding.
The recent increases in the price of oil and its derivatives have led to projects for using straw for other uses, in particular as animal food, as heating fuel, and as raw material for synthesizing alcohol.
One proposal for overcoming these drawbacks has been to house animals in individual stalls known as "cubicals" or "cow-kennels" in which the floor is either a mud floor, or a wooden grating, or brick laid directly on earth, or concrete, and which are so arranged that a standing animal defecates (and urinates if female) directly into a gully provided beyond the end of that part of the floor which is occupied by the animal when lying down.
Unfortunately, mud floors, particularly in chalky ground, wear away locally, leaving holes which require constant attention and which are not always easy to fill in.
Wooden gratings or "duckboards" are hard for lying on, fairly expensive, and further they interfere with the flow of water when washing down.
Brick and concrete floors are not only hard, they are also cold.
Furthermore, such floors still require the use of some straw, albeit in reduced quantities, and they also have the drawback of encouraging various ailments in the animals using them, in particular their joints often become sprained, wrenched, deformed, rheumatic, or arthritic.
Proper use of a floor covering in accordance with the present invention greatly reduces the incidence of such damage, and overcomes the other drawbacks outlined above as well. Furthermore, it is easy to install and keep clean, and offers a high resistance to wear from animal hooves, thereby ensuring a long useful life and relatively low cost.